


The Last Days Of Godric's Hollow

by templeg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Love Letters, M/M, MWPP Era, Marauders' Era, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-08
Updated: 2012-03-08
Packaged: 2017-11-01 16:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeg/pseuds/templeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the last days of the Potters' lives, the Marauders' letters show James' frustration, hint at Peter's betrayal, and explore Sirius and Remus' relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 27th October 1981

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Shoebox Project](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/7197) by dorkorific, Lady Jaida. 



> Author’s Note: The idea for this fic was born after I re-read, for about the hundredth time, the wonderful Shoebox Project and also for the hundredth time wished that we had got to see those versions of the Marauders further on in their story, i.e. see Lily and James get married and have Harry, see Peter after he joined the Death Eaters, and see more of Remus and Sirius’ relationship, which remains the only non-canon pairing I ship. So although this is a fic of book-canon events, the characterisation of the Marauders and Lily, and the version of their time at Hogwarts, is that of the Shoebox Project. Basically, this is a fic of a fic as much as it is a fic of the books themselves, and I recommend that you read it, not just because it is my inspiration for this but also because it is by miles the best fanfic I’ve ever read, and now to a great extent shapes how I see the characters involved when I re-read the books.
> 
> Author's Note 8th March 2012: I wrote this fic almost a year ago, before I was properly in fandom, and some of it slightly contravenes accepted canon (e.g., Sirius and Remus thought each other was the spy). For this I can only grovel profusely.

Early morning sunlight streamed in through the window. It lit up the rings of tea scattered stickily across the table, and made beams of dust appear, hovering with a tranquility that was maddening to the young man sitting at the table, elbows planted squarely in the midst of the tea-rings and glasses sliding down his nose. In this light, the piece of parchment in front of him looked even more stubbornly blank than it had already.

            There was a rattling sound from the corner of the room. James Potter’s head jerked up, his body twisting to face the threat head-on, to see the portly grey shape of Horace the cat slide through the cat flap.

            Just the cat. Good. Everyone- and everything- was still safe. Safe as safe as safe.

            Good old safety.

 

Looking back down at his blank piece of parchment, James realised that his hand had gone instinctively to his wand. More out of irritation than anything else, he whipped it out with a flourish and spun in his chair to point it at the wall.

            ‘Stupefy!’

He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. The spell bounced off the wall and towards the draining board, knocking a saucepan to the floor and making Horace flee the room with unprecedented speed. He stowed his wand back into his pocket, and as he went to pick up the pan he had a thought of exactly the kind he had been trying not to let himself have-

            _That was probably the only proper magic you’ll get to do all day._

Filled with a childish desire to prove himself wrong, he put the pan back on the floor and levitated it, very slowly and not without dropping it twice, back onto the draining board. It landed on top of a pile of spoons, slid sideways and fell into the sink in a shower of cutlery.

            James turned back to his parchment, trying to repress a desire to make more noise, perhaps by banging two saucepan lids together like he hadn’t done since he was nine. Another loud noise would break the aggravatingly sedate and cosy atmosphere in the kitchen, it was true, but it might also wake Lily or Harry, and they both looked wonderfully peaceful when asleep. He didn’t like to admit it to himself, but he felt slightly jealous of their tranquility, and it was not worth feeling immensely guilty all day for the brief second of childish glee disrupting them would give him. And he knew he would feel guilty all day. That was the thing about staying in one very small cottage all day long- small things, like waking up a tousled and probably bad-breathed redhead and a moody toddler suddenly took on huge importance. Instead, he grabbed his quill and, spraying ink blobs far and wide, scrawled two words across his parchment, so large that there would be no room for a date-

 

            _Dear Padfoot,_

Then he stopped again. He looked around him, to see if anything would show him what to write, but nothing seemed to have changed in centuries. There was a copy of _Which Broomstick?_ , which Harry had smeared with pureed carrots so that the preening young man on the Nimbus 1000 had flown away in indignation. There were innumerable cold cups of tea he had made out of sheer boredom and then realised he didn’t want. There was Harry’s high chair, one of the legs nearly completely chewed through before they had thought to buy Harry a rubber bone of the sort given to dogs. And there was the drying rack, over which was slung nearly his entire collection of moth-eaten T-shirts, as well as Lily’s green gingham bra. Only the very last of this catalogue seemed at all interesting, and he sincerely hoped that it wouldn’t be of interest to Padfoot.

 

            _Dear Padfoot,_

_How goes whatever top-secret, ultra-sexy manly mission you’re on? I’m fighting the good fight here on the home front, beating hordes of Death Eaters away from our door daily, and I expect Lord Voldemort himself will turn up to duel me to the death any day now. I’ve been practicing my best moves on any Death Eaters still foolish enough to try and menace chez Potter, and I don’t want to brag but in all honesty I think I could take him._

James screwed up the letter, then lobbed it into the air and shot a spell at it. He missed by several inches; instead, it burnt a hole in the sofa while the crumpled parchment fell to the floor unscathed. Looking around once more, his eyes fell on a photograph hanging on the wall, high enough to have escaped the puree redecoration that every object less than three feet from the floor had suffered. It showed four boys, laughing at the camera with boyish overconfidence, arms around each other. He had always thought of this photo as perfectly representing the Marauder days, all four of them laughing together as one huge, raucous concentration of Boy. But looking at it now- Remus wasn’t laughing quite as hard as everyone else, that wasn’t surprising, but he wasn’t looking at the camera either. Why had he never noticed that before? He and Sirius seemed to be sharing their own joke, or rather Sirius seemed to be laughing at Remus and Remus was pink-faced with embarrassment and suppressed laughter. But he, James, remembered that photo being taken and they had been laughing all together, he was sure. It was their last week at Hogwarts. They were celebrating their final prank, an extravaganza involving their last twenty Dungbombs and Filch’s office. They had nearly been caught and had been split up, and he and Pete had been waiting by the tree for twenty worrying minutes for Sirius and Remus, during which time Lily turned up with a huge camera and a determination to put to film every last second of their final week. The photo itself had been taken when Sirius and Remus, oddly red in the face both and laughing wildly, had come sprinting down the lawn and flung themselves into the all-boy melee, while Lily laughed and sighed and managed to make them arrange themselves into what could loosely be described as a line, rather than a heap. The laughter, in James’ memory of that brilliant day, came from relief at no one having been Filched and joy at the inherent funniness of Dungbombs and the thought of Filch’s expression. Pete was laughing with him, he could see, peering over the tops of Sirius’ and Remus’ heads, but he kept wobbling in and out of the frame, jostled along so that he was frequently almost completely excluded. Had it been like that? He didn’t want it to have been, didn’t want those days to be the least bit different from how he remembered them. Especially not now, when everything- and everyone- seemed to have changed.

 

            _Dear Padfoot,_

_Pete came round on Wednesday, I don’t remember if I already said. If I’m honest it was a bit awkward, we don’t seem to know what to say to one another anymore. I suppose it’s different now we’re not Us Four all the time anymore, but it has been four years, you’d think we’d have got used to it by now. Anyway, he looked awful for some reason, all pale and ill. Pete the little pink pig pale, I know! But that isn’t even the amazing part! Padfoot, Pete’s belly is GONE! Or shrunk a lot, anyway. He looks weird and unPeteish without it, especially because the skin where it used to be still hasn’t shrunk to fit it. He was acting really strange, too. When Lily came in with Harry he wouldn’t stop staring at him for ages, and I swear his hand started shaking. Maybe it’s because it’s weird for him- and all of us, actually, I still can’t believe it- that I have an actual son, I mean he’s seen Harry before but back then he was more of a pink squirmy little sea-monkey thing and now he’s almost like an actual little person! Don’t tell Lily I said that, she would kill me. Not to get all gushy and parenty, because I am after all still a young buck with my life ahead of me and not some old geezer in a cardigan, but he looks more and more like me, especially now he has actual hair I am pleased to report that it will NOT lie down, just like his old man’s. Oh, but he does have Lily’s eyes. I’m just happy that her eyes will survive another generation, because Lily’s eyes have always been one of my favourite things about her (beyond the obvious fnar fnar). Right, sorry, I’ve finished being all gooey. Back to Pete. I hoped that it might be shock and awe at my outstanding virility to produce such healthy, hearty and charming offspring, but when Harry tried to climb him he looked like he might be sick and practically jumped out of his chair. Maybe it was just jealousy, we all know he’s always wanted to have my lovechildren. Or maybe because Harry was chewing his trousers, who can tell?_

_Anyway, I felt a bit guilty because I realised I don’t really know how to talk to Pete without you and Moony. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that it isn’t that way with you or Moony, I mean here I am blithering away to you right now. Is it like that for you with him? Pete, I mean? I don’t remember any of us doing stuff with just him, and the rest of us did stuff in pairs all the time, I mean you and Moony spent the whole of the last term or so sneaking off together, to plot a mutiny or make passionate love or- what did_ _you two get up to, anyway? But I hate remembering this because when I think of the Marauder days it ought to be all four of us, one for all and all for one and so on. And this spoils it because when I was rummaging around trying to think of something nostalgic to reminisce about none of the bits I could remember involved Pete. I mean, he was there, but I can’t remember anything he actually did. I still can’t actually. Maybe I’m going senile._

_Oh blimey I’m being gooey again and talking about FEELINGS, so you’ve probably got bored and wandered off to blow stuff up or break into Gringotts or something. This is what happens when young bucks like me live in a house where the only other males are a toddler who can only say ‘B’oom’ (meaning toy broom, a present that we appreciate very much although it means he can now break higher-up objects and smear puree an extra few feet up the walls, but at least he seems to have inherited his father’s Quidditch prowess so we may make a Seeker of him yet) and a cat. I need to talk of MANLY THINGS, otherwise I will take to wearing lipstick and you will have to start calling me Jamesina. Oh God, I just realised that you are bound to find that image sexy in your boundless lust for me. Stop it now, I’m a married man._

_Write back SOON with details of your manly exploits, or I might just take to reading romance novels and watching those soppy Muggle films Lily likes with the blokes in tight trousers._

_Prongs_

_P.S. I know you can’t give details, sorry. But a general gist of manliness might be enough to tide me over._

_P.P.S. Write back fast enough, Monsieur le Padfoot, and I might send a photo of me in a bra. There, that should get you going (ooer)._

*****

 

 

Lily woke early to a chorus of crashes from the kitchen and lay still for a while, staring at the ceiling. According to the alarm clock by the bed, it was only six thirty, but it wasn’t unusual for James to be up by now. He had been getting up earlier and earlier lately, which seemed counterproductive because the confines of the cottage only frustrated him. But then, he wasn’t the sort of person who could lie in bed for any length of time once awake. She stretched luxuriously, pointing her toes as far as they would go into the air and then letting them fall with a _whumph_ onto the duvet, as far apart as possible so that, starfish-like, she took up the whole bed. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that James didn’t like lie-ins.

            He was bored, though, she could tell, although she tried not to take it personally. It wasn’t because of her, she _knew_ that, it was because all his friends were off fighting the forces of evil while he tried to get baby food out of the upholstery. And for some strange, male reason, he seemed to actually want to risk his life dancing around under Voldemort’s nose. Was it selfish of her to be glad that he wasn’t risking his life anymore? Even if he was bored, at least he was _alive._ And what was more, she knew where he was, and that he was safe. She didn’t think she could bear going back to waiting at home, with nothing but occasional letters and no guarantee at all at any given moment that he hadn’t just died or been horribly injured. Lily curled up into a ball, forehead pressed against her knees. She tried not to think about when he _had_ been injured, on a mission with Sirius, because just the memory made her feel ill. She didn’t care if it was selfish; she just needed to know that he was safe, and nearby, and not _dead_.

            The quiet was broken by a snuffling noise from the next room; Harry was snoring. With enormous relief, Lily reverted to worrying about small, motherly things. He had had that cold for several weeks now, maybe he should see a Healer. But getting to St Mungo’s presented a problem in itself because it probably qualified as unsafe, they’d need to clear it with the Order and maybe get security, and then what if it turned out to be nothing? Could you get Healers to come to you? She had no idea. They wouldn’t be able to tell anyone where they were; only Peter could do that, but having a stranger come into the house probably qualified as a security risk too. She groaned, rolled over and pressed her face into the pillow. Suddenly, James’ frustration seemed to make a bit more sense. Parenting was complicated and disorienting enough without being stranded in the middle of nowhere and having to arrange for convoys of sombre, bulky men to follow them around whenever they wanted to go anywhere.

            Horace the cat bounded suddenly into the room, taking a flying leap and landing, paws-first and with incredible accuracy, on the small of her back. Lily flipped over in shock at the sudden weight, dislodging him onto the duvet where he turned round and round on the spot several times before collapsing into a huge bag of loose skin, purring smugly and looking remarkably like his namesake. Wrapping the pillow around her head to drown out his earth-shaking rumbling, Lily closed her eyes firmly. It wasn’t even seven yet; there was plenty more time to sleep.


	2. 28th October 1981

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Because what can happen to and around the Potters is limited by the fact that they are in hiding, and also because Sirius and Remus are two of my favourite characters, I am not limiting myself to only chronicling the story that takes place actually in Godric’s Hollow. It still takes place during those last days, some of it is still going to centre on the Potters, but it is also going to involve the other Marauders. I promise I won’t get too distracted (or I’ll try not to, anyway).

_Dear Jamesina,_

_My manly exploits aren’t terribly exciting at present I’m afraid and no I am not just saying that to get you into a bra and lipstick. You know perfectly well I love you just the way you are- a skinny berk with glasses and stupid hair who I keep around because you make such a good foil for my rugged handsomeness. After you got locked away for the safety of everyone else (I don’t care what Dumbledore says it’s all a ploy to keep the world safe from you and no that is not a good thing) I was all alone in my tent for about a week which was very lonely and all of that except now it doesn’t seem so bad. At least on my own or with you I could spread my manly possessions about with gay abandon (stop it) whereas the fool I now share a tent with, Andrew Bones, doesn’t seem at all enamoured of my forays into mould horticulture. I can just hear Moony groaning about that, according to his thrilling textbook about which he will not shut his moony great gob mould is not a form of plant life etc etc. Clearly he has not met my mould garden; anything that shade of green is either a plant or an alien invader. Anyway you might think that knowingly signing up for months on end in a smelly tent many miles from the nearest shower would imply a willingness to let yourself go a bit, but nooo, the toothbrushes must be kept in the special bloody toothbrush mug AT ALL TIMES, muddy shoes have to be taken off when you crawl in like you’re entering a very small Swedish spa and he made me fold my pyjamas! The poor things have never been subjected to such cruel and unusual punishment, I can hear them crying softly at night. In other news my hair is now so long that Moony ran gibbering and screaming of yetis the last time he saw me. He wouldn’t come anywhere near me until I had brushed it (another first I think unless you count running your hands through it a fine art I of course learned from the master, does Lily still hate it when you do that?) and when I got back to my tent of NEAT UND TIDINESS HERR KOMMANDANT he sent me my very own little hairbrush which although mercifully not pink is slightly less mercifully all curly round the edges and the girliest thing I’ve ever owned, not counting you (love-muffin)._

_ARGH FEELINGS NOOOO. Stuff is crap right now as a great man might once have said if he wasn’t having a very wise-y day and Pete was never much of a fightin’ man. Maybe that’s what’s bothering him. If it is he shouldn’t be bothered by it, some men are just not cut out for this sort of thing. I have no idea what he does these days; does he still work at his dad’s tailor’s place? That would get anyone down. It does seem unfair that big girl’s blouses like Pete be free to sit on their girly arses all day and knit or throw their handbags at the Death Eaters as they choose while REAL FIGHTERS like you get shut up in tiddly little villages. Actually no, scratch that, it isn’t the least bit unfair. At least Pete poses no threat to anyone around him while let you anywhere near a fight to the death with handbags or otherwise and who knows what could happen? In fact we’ve SEEN what could (and did) happen and I think it speaks for itself. Don’t come crying to me young lady, if you wanted to fight you shouldn’t have been so a) useless and b) terminally insane. It’s for your own good. Maybe being a housewife is your true calling. I think your drooling about your sea-monkey hellspawn is evidence enough, talking about girls’ eyes like a great big girly… poet… man. Like Remus. YOU BIG GIRLY SOD. It would be much much weirder if your ‘other favourite things you like about her’ had been passed down, now there’s an image that will prevent you from ever looking at your son ever again. You can add it to your pile of useful gifts I have given you. Speaking of which I bloody hope he’s not a ‘Seeker’ in the same way you were a ‘Seeker’ i.e. hovering some two feet from a certain redhead bint running your hands endlessly through your hair and trying to flex your pathetically invisible muscles without falling off your broom otherwise Gryffindor may never win the House Cup ever again. Remember that game in fourth year where you thought she was just shouting at you to push off until you realised she was pointing out the Snitch? Good thing you have fast reflexes for such a flaily-limbed cooked noodle of a man; you should have just tied her to the back of your broom (ooer) and got her to give you directions. When Harry is older and you start teaching him to play with something that isn’t the gooey orange stuff your letter was smeared with I shall have to be there to prance about in a red wig so he can learn to BLOODY CONCENTRATE even with sexy chicks like yours truly as distractions. I say a red wig because you are bound to have somehow made him as redhead-obsessed as you are and everyone knows that godfathers are who confused young lads come to receive pearls of wisdom from about the fairer sex. I can hear you shuddering from here about what I’ll tell him. MWAHAHAA, let that torment you for the next twelve years or so._

_Bloody hell that was a tangent. I have been trying to avoid this bit mostly because I don’t know. Like I said, stuff. Crap. That kind of thing. I suppose it was like that but I didn’t realise until now either. Cheers. I did stuff with you because again like I said you made a good foil and someone to bounce my excellent ideas off without the requisite two brain cells required to immediately call the authorities. I did stuff with Remus because of the calming influence he was on me, or something, I don’t know don’t ask me. I didn’t do stuff with Pete because, er, he was just sort of Pete. And neither you nor Remus. Goodness, but I’m eloquent._

_Padfoot_

_P.S. You are absolutely ‘some old geezer in a cardigan’. I can’t believe I never saw it before._

Sirius dotted his final full stop with deep regret and stared blankly at the letter, wanting any excuse to keep writing. Across the tent Andrew Bones was staring with undisguised maliciousness at Sirius’ collection of unrolled socks and seemed already to be giving him Meaningful Looks.

He was on the point of hurling every pair of socks he owned at Bones and his martyred expression when something owl-sized bumped into the side of the tent and began to make rapping noises against the sagging canvas. Bowling Bones against the central pole and nearly bringing the entire structure down, he leapt from his bed and scrabbled out of the flap to see Remus Lupin’s tawny owl, Merlin, blinking gently with a square envelope in his beak. Something shiny and yellow flooded through him, making him feel as though he had to jump around, or possibly flail his arms like James, or- Sirius did the sensible thing and lunged for the letter, making Merlin shoot into the air with an aggrieved hoot and falling into the side of the tent. He slid to the ground and ripped the letter open with one long, grimy fingernail, all the time telling himself firmly that it was _stupid_ to be so ridiculously happy, that it was not in the _least_ bit manly to want to burst into song, that _what the hell were you thinking, subconscious? Shiny yellow… bubble things? I am not a girl I am NOT A GIRL-_ and then he saw Remus’ careful, even handwriting that somehow personified politeness and Stiff Upper Lip and he saw him, shaping each letter as though it were a priceless work of art, constructing sentences with the care and dedication of someone building a house of cards, chewing his bottom lip and fiddling with the hole in the sleeve of his jumper. Things suddenly became very simple.

 

_Pads,_

_Out of sheer unbounded optimism, I am going to assume you will be glad to hear that my textbook (not ‘my’ textbook, per se, although the semicolons are something like ninety percent mine) is, after four years, nearly finished! And not just because it means that I will stop telling you all about aardvarks (and also alliteration) but because finally the laymen of the world can benefit from my perfectly edited sentences, and now I can occasionally get home before eleven at night. If this is not reason enough for joy, if in fact you are a childish and selfish bugger who cares not for grammar or sentence structure (in which case my next letter will be a_ Dear John _one, a Muggle concept I doubt you are familiar with) then let me point out that now I will have a lot more free time to write you letters. Which is all I really can think to do. That should give you an idea (if you hadn’t caught on already) of how pathetically sad I am, but don’t smirk too much because I’m sure you fairly pine for my letters, and they are the only things keeping you fighting, und so weiter. Are you using your hairbrush? If not you need to; put down this letter and go do it now. Go on. I’ll be waiting, tapping my foot and looking parenty. It’s the only way._

Miraculously, and for reasons he was uncertain of, Sirius _had_ been using it, and every evening at that. It was oddly soothing, once you got past the first few minutes or so of scalp-wrenching pain and alarming discoveries (including what looked like half a mercifully dead caterpillar), and it made him think of Moony, constantly fiddling with both his own hair and Sirius’ in a way that he complained about but secretly missed desperately when stranded in a tent in the middle of nowhere.

 

_Done? Good. Your bloody monster of a motorbike still hates me, and I think it’s getting restless. I went to check on it and Padfoot, I swear that thing has grown teeth! I do not trust it and never shall. You need to take it for a ride when you visit next, otherwise it will break through the wall and escape, probably taking a slight detour to track me down and fulfill its mysterious vendetta against me on its way to the great motorbike Valhalla, but I will not be joining you. Take Prongs, or, I dunno, Harry. He’d probably love it; having visited the sickeningly domesticated Potters I can tell you first hand that he seems to like nothing more than being a nuisance in places higher up than he (not that those have to be very high- were babies always this small? Were we? I find it hard to believe). Just make sure that he doesn’t take any weaponised vegetable mush with him, because otherwise some poor Muggle two hundred feet below will get a nasty surprise._

_Um. This next bit is sort of the important bit. It’s just that, well, it’s been however many years now. A few. I am not in any way implying that my ardour for you is waning, so don’t panic. Rest assured that everything between us is still just as wonderful as that first slightly haphazard snog behind the broom-shed (it had to be behind the broom-shed, didn’t it? Have we no imagination at all?) and I promise that I will never, ever get used to it. If I am wrong, I will offer myself as a human sacrifice to your ravenous motorbike because, and I do mean this, being totally surprised by how unusually favourably the heavens seem to be treating me every single time I seem you is unequivocally the best thing in my life. No, my point is… why exactly would it still be so terrible for the others to know? Maybe it’s because, illiterate tongue-tied bumpkins as we are, neither of us seem yet to have figured out what it is we’d be telling them about. But maybe that doesn’t matter. I don’t know. It just seems strange not to tell them when there’s no real reason to keep it from them and (I think, at least) it is sort of important. It isn’t like they’d disown us, or anything. Is it?_

_Life is mostly boring now, actually, as the textbook seems to have all the semi-colons I am allowed to improve it with and therefore my life is semi-colon-less and tragically without purpose. All that happens at work is that Amelia, the hapless woman who I went out with that one time long ago that ended in quiche-covered misery for all concerned, has decided to speak to me again after very sensibly refusing to work anywhere near me. Probably she would have been better off continuing to stay far, far away, in a different department, office or solar system, but clearly her brains are addled (as evidenced by her deeply masochistic decision to ask me out in the first place when any fool can see that I am a pompous stammering twit, large of nose and short of sensible conversation appropriate for normal social interaction, but anyway.) Slightly worryingly, she seems to have decided that I am going to be her new best friend, of the ‘girlfriend you look fabulous’ sort. I am trying very hard not to panic about this. Firstly, and I am aware of how utterly obtuse this sounds given the roaring success that was our date, HOW DOES SHE KNOW? Actually you are the worst person in the world to ask this, given how much of our acquaintance you have spent calling me a girl, but I shall ask it anyway. Maybe she can smell you on me (I wouldn’t be surprised. As a follow-up to your initiation into the wonderful world of hairbrushes, next time I see you I am going to introduce you to Mr. Hairbrush’s close personal friend, Mrs. Soap, and perhaps even Mr. Deodorant. I am sure they will soon become your very best chums, or else you will not see me without a gasmask on). But by far the more pressing problem is how deeply unsuited I am to the role I am called upon to fulfill. Can you imagine me telling someone they look ‘fierce’? I think I would die from shame, or else choke to death on my own verbal constipation (I put that in just to get you back on side after the threats of Hygiene; I know you must nourish the sniggering eight-year-old boy inside you). Anyway she made me go shopping with her, I think under the impression that I would be a good source for fashion advice. I’ll let that sink in for a moment, to allow you to prepare yourself. And what you must remember is that she has worked with me for years, so unless she is completely blind (not impossible, considering once again that she once thought me date material) she must surely have noticed that my wardrobe consists of the same three gradually unraveling jumpers which I have worn on loop since leaving school forced me to choose my own clothes. And one of them is mustard-coloured and was knitted by my aunt. It (the shopping, not the jumper) was completely horrific, as you probably could have guessed- I sat on a series of stools in rooms full of undressing women, with whom I stopped trying to make small talk after the conical bra of the lady who I was discussing the weather with nearly left me blind in one eye), while Amelia asked my opinion on an endless procession of brightly-coloured things, including one agonising hour or so spanning two and a half shops during which I swear everything she showed me was exactly the same set of pink robes with, perhaps, a slightly more or less curly fastening. She didn’t seem to notice that my response to each and every thing she tried on was exactly the same, namely ‘Mmmphyesverynice’. I think I was supposed to tell her that cerulean brings out her nose or that she should never wear a sweetheart neckline (whatever horrifying thing that may be), but I’m not even sure whether I mean cerulean or cerise, so how should I know what ‘her colours’ are? I’m becoming slightly hysterical, as I was then; I think I may need a glass of water. Poor woman, she is clearly completely mad. And blind. And apparently deaf. Do only lunatics get hired to construct this blasted textbook, or do years of fiddling about with aardvarks drive us to this sorry state? We may never know. Especially not me, because if I am made to go shopping again I will lose my tentative grip on my already questionable sanity entirely._

_I miss you. Moony._


	3. 29th October 1981

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: I am trying very, very hard to stick to established canon (including the incredibly obscure, like that the McKinnons died in July 1981) using the Harry Potter Wikia and painstakingly crawling through the books. However, if I find something out after I’ve written it I may be forced to cheat a bit, so in my headcanon although Lily’s letter to Sirius in Deathly Hallows refers to ‘the news about the McKinnons’ that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the McKinnons died at exactly the same time. Possibly there is another, even more obscure bit of arcana that proves me wrong. Until I find it, or someone else points it out, I’m sticking to my version.

**AUROR KILLED IN DEATH EATER RAID**

 

_An Auror has been found dead in her home, over which was placed the Dark Mark. Marlene McKinnon died of a Killing Curse after being overwhelmed by Death Eater forces, just a few months after her parents and two elder brothers were also murdered._

_The unnamed Death Eaters are believed to have broken into her house shortly after midnight yesterday, setting off the protective charms McKinnon, 25, had placed around the building and alerting her to the danger. The hallway in which she was killed showed clear signs of a struggle- the furniture upended and badly damaged, the wallpaper torn- showing that McKinnon was not taken unawares and for some time defended herself against the oncoming forces. Indeed, it is believed that McKinnon’s Auror training and advanced combat skills allowed her to keep her attackers at bay for as long as half an hour before she was overcome by far greater numbers. In a statement released to the_ Prophet _, Albus Dumbledore, McKinnon’s former Headmaster, praised her courage and skill, saying:_

_‘It is a mark of Marlene’s bravery, her remarkable talents in all kinds of magic and her intimidating determination to fight the forces of evil, that this cowardly attack was carried out not only in the dead of night in her own home, but that Lord Voldemort deemed it necessary to send what I am informed was a group of some twelve Death Eaters to murder a single woman, who but for her foresight in defending herself would have been unarmed and unconscious. It brings me deep sadness not only that an excellent Auror has been lost, but that the wizarding community as a whole has lost Marlene.’_

James’ fingernails had torn through the edges of the newspaper. A single word, _Marlene_ , with a few sundry letters attached, had been ripped away and lay taunting him in his palm.

            He heard the sound of Lily entering the room and turned to see her standing in the doorway. Harry, propped against her shoulder, squirmed, pointed a sticky fist at him and said ‘Da’ee!’ Lily meanwhile said nothing, but the question was there in every aspect of her stance. Her jaw was set, as though steeling herself for a blow, and the determination in her eyes failed to mask visible dread. She met his eyes, looking small and scared, like a child anticipating terrible pain, and her jaw tightened even more until he almost expected to hear her teeth breaking.

            He didn’t want to do it, didn’t think he could bear being the one to inflict upon her what was causing her so much fear. Marlene… she had been Lily’s friend, been the older sister she needed- one who didn’t run away from her with fear and resentment every holiday. He remembered begging Marlene to, what had he said, ‘put in a good word’ for him, some time in fifth year maybe, when Lily still thought him an arrogant bully. When he _was_ an arrogant bully. She had laughed in his face. But that was Marlene. She gave people what she thought they deserved, which almost always coincided with what they did deserve. She never, ever minced words. She only helped people with things not that they needed help with, but that she wanted to see them be better at for her own twisted amusement. Apart from a very select, all-female few, including Lily, she treated all younger students as amusing little pets, only intermittently interesting, and she made them work, hard, to be thought that. James had _worshipped_ her. She had taught him, one afternoon when she was bored, to fight. He had been useless, not helped by his desperation to impress her, but he still remembered her ferocity and easy concentration and utter scorn for his weedy flailing, and by extension for anyone who would _dare_ challenge her, without first ascertaining that they were considerably better than _very, very good._ He hadn’t quite dared to ask her where she had learned to fight.

            He looked down at the paper in his hands.

 

_…a group of some twelve Death Eaters…_

He couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that had been good enough. Nothing as mundane as greater numbers would have been the thing powerful enough to stop Marlene McKinnon from fighting. No, when it had somehow happened- however that was possible- Marlene had gone down with the same scorn in her eyes as all those years ago.

            Lily was still standing, terrified, the nails of one hand dug deep into the doorframe. Her knuckles were white, her eyes pleading.

            James met her eyes. She deserved at least that.

 

‘Marlene McKinnon.’

 

            All her determination, the clenched jaw, the white fists- it hadn’t been enough. Lily’s eyes were a little girl’s as she shook her head violently and whispered:

 

‘They already… they already killed all her family, they can’t-’

 

There was nothing he could do. Lily was crumbling like ash and there was nothing, _nothing_ that could be done and he wanted to beat down the door and break the people who had done this to her into mince, he wanted to throw chairs and break things and not think at all for a very long time.

 

            ‘But she was…’

 

His voice was harsh. ‘It took twelve Death Eaters to do it.’

 

Lily’s expression of blank denial broke like a crumpled paper mask. Her eyes filled with tears and they moved for one another, clinging desperately to hair and clothing and familiarity, Harry nearly crushed between them. James buried his face in her hair and sobbed, shaking with anger and grief and agonising, unbearable helplessness. She had died while he slept in a cottage far away and done nothing, and he wanted to annihilate the Death Eaters with the sheer force of his fury. Instead he sobbed boiling, clinging tears that streaked through tangled red hair into tufted black, the hair of the only two people who made the world remain bearable.

 

*****

 

 

_Mooooooooooooooooony,_

_OF COURSE I am pleased about your textbook!!!! What kind of callous oaf do you take me for??? I know how much your semicolons mean to you, have I not been on the receiving end of your punctuation ravings for however many decades now? Have I not been patient and attentive and so forth and not run away or stuffed your textbook down your moony gob and left you for dead? I appreciate that we are many miles away but what is a paltry physical separation to a boundless love of the souls like ours eh Moony old fruit old bean old chum? If I wanted to choke you to death on reams of aardvark-related facts in the dead of night then nothing so mundane as distance would prevent me from reaching you. Let THAT haunt your nightmares herewith, mwahaha I do nothing but spread joy to all those I touch. So logically I spread extra helpings of joy to you, eh EH geddit nudge nudge wink wink. You’re right; my eight-year-old self does need nourishment. But anyway I have been celebrating Sirius-style this fantabulous news or at least I WOULD have if a) I could stand up straight in this tent and b) Dumbles hadn’t for some utterly sadistic reason decided that bringing Firewhiskey on missions wasn’t conductive to getting ourselves all dramatically killed by knobheads in masks or whatever it is we’re trying to do around here I lose track. I did do a little dancey thing doubled over and with about two square inches of legroom but Herr Kommandant Bones made me stop because I knocked over his precious shrinkable ironing kit thingy (don’t ask) with my mad stomping and leaping. What more fitting tribute could there be I ask you?_

_Merlin’s undercrackers you aren’t my wartime sweetheart are you? Because it sounds like it what with the lounging around writing me tearstained letters and staring tragically out of the window waiting for your brave boy to come home. That is what you are doing yes? No point in denying it because I’ll imagine it anyway. I would ask for you to send me a picture of you looking winsome in a heart-shaped frame for me to tuck tenderly into my uniform pocket except that I don’t think you could look winsome if your life depended on it and also I don’t have a uniform. Or any clothes at all really because despite Bones’ best efforts every item of clothing I own is now more mud than cloth and most of it is just rags, not even the sort worn by big-eyed orphans in Dickens novels more the kind that you find bunging up the sink._

_Yes I have been using my hairbrush! What kind of disgusting slovenly creature do you take me for? I found half a caterpillar the first time I tried it and yet I persevered for your sake; I would send you it as a tribute from a knight to his lady love or whatever it is you are but Bones went green when he saw it and I had to bring out the smelling salts and then bury it behind the tent. It was a simple ceremony but I think he would have liked it (the caterpillar not Bones who I think was being sick around the other side of the tent the big girl)._

_My motorbike is a gentle beast at heart; I can’t fathom why it has taken such a disliking to you. It pines for me. As for the teeth I hope you’re not joking because few things would be cooler than a motorbike with teeth. A motorbike with teeth and tits and that was on fire, maybe._

_Harry on my motorbike, now there’s a thought. I can see us now, swooping low over the rooftops of some sweeping metropolis, cackling wildly and dive-bombing people with handfuls of gloopified carrot. Unfortunately I suspect Lily will be boring and claim that my motorbike is somehow unsafe and that I’d drop him down a chimney or into the sea or something. Plus he is meant to be in hiding and some wet blanket (Dumbles) would be bound to think that whizzing about the sky strafing innocent Muggles doesn’t qualify as ‘hiding’. Pah I say pah!_

_Don’t you call me unimaginative; I wasn’t the one who chose the venue. I would remind you that I was merely having an innocent cigarette and you came up gibbering wildly and attacked me, so you can’t blame me for the ‘slightly haphazard’ either. Anyway what’s wrong with ‘slightly haphazard’? The best snogs are the wonky ones; I cannot have failed to teach you that over the years. And no, I’m not used to it either. How could I be, I always seem to forget exactly what it is we do and… well, what it’s like in between seeing you. And then I do see you, and it’s like you said, about the heavens. Maybe it’s karma paying me back for my heroism, and you for your, um, services to punctuation._

_OK, OK, the point is being got to. I know what you mean, and yes it is important. I hate lying to Prongs and it does feel like lying even if he doesn’t as such tend to ask questions like ‘Say Padfoot old chum, have you and Moony been getting it on every time you come home on leave?’ for me to artfully deflect. I mean, I lived with him in a tent for however long and it never seemed to be quite the right time to go ‘Oh by the way, best friend, I’ve been buggering your other best friend for the last four years, thought you might like to know’. Merlin, deep breaths, OK, I’ll tell him in my next letter. And you can write to him too if you want. Now I just need to figure out what to say. Help! These are the options I have so far:_

_a)_ _‘Oh by the way, best friend, I’ve been buggering your other best friend for the last four years, thought you might like to know’._

_b)_ _À la Billy Paul: ‘Meeeee and Moony, Moony Joooones, we got a thiiiiiiing, goin’ awwn’_

_c)_ _I don’t know, something sensible. ‘I probably should have told you years ago, but me and Moony are kind of sort of a couple’ (Are we a couple? I’ve never really thought about that. I suppose you are technically my ‘boyfriend’, god that is very very weird)._

_d)_ _Mysterious option d) (meaning I DON’T BLOODY KNOW)._

_I don’t know if you’ll get this before I write to him but you never know. Even if you don’t I like to think I know you well enough to telepathically sense what you would pick, i.e. c) and anyway I really really want to get this done now we’ve decided to. I might be horribly wrong somehow, if I am I will grovel when next I see you, and by grovel I mean… grovel. Hahaha got you going there didn’t I! You filthy boy. I’m also going to have to guess that you won’t mind my calling us a couple because you are obviously the girl in this relationship and as we all know men are but dogs wanting nothing but lechery and merriment whereas girls want love and romance and promises everlasting etc etc bollocks etc. I always thought I was the lecherous dog type, yet I cannot help but notice that I have got it on with only one person for FOUR YEARS and you aren’t even Farrah Fawcett. I am every bit as pathetic as you. But I digress._

_Jesus I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. Shit. It’s weird because as we’ve said repeatedly, four years, but it’s never really sunk in that that might mean something about me, I mean like that I am a… a something. What the hell am I??? I do like girls or I mean I did like girls, before, but I don’t really know if I still like girls because well I haven’t been paying attention to anyone else male or female. Bloody hell I just said ‘male’. I don’t, I mean I don’t notice men, at all, but not girls either. See this is the problem because I’m so completely in love with you (I just said that. Yes, yes I did. And I’m not going to take it back either) that I don’t know what I am, whether I’m completely bent or just partially bent. I’m, I’m moonysexual. OK. That sounds weird enough that it could apply to me, so for now I’ll go with that. You think you were becoming hysterical, see what you’ve done to me? Bones is giving me funny looks because I just started hyperventilating and am having to take huge deep breaths, which is normally his job when he sees my socks or a caterpillar or the state of the toothbrush mug. I must and shall calm down. Calm. Ommmm._

_The universe seems completely bent ( NO PUN INTENDED) on robbing the both of us of what facsimile of manhood we might once have had; of course that’s much easier in your case HAR HAR HAR. Did someone drop this woman on her head during her formative years? Actually I am inclined to agree with you in that only the very very mad are hired into your textbook asylum but I would expand your hypothesis to postulate (I got that word from you, you should be very proud) that only the very very mad are attracted to such an institution in the first place. Poor Moony, you never had a chance. Whenever I feel that the hardships of the soldierly life are too much to bear, I will think of you, forced to sit around and watch women undress you jammy bloody bastard. I am particularly jealous about the pointy bra; it sounds kinky. You would talk about the weather, too. I despair for you. But then, did you ever care about girls, like at all? I don’t remember, except that one time you kissed Lily and that didn’t count because it was enforced by mistletoe. Maybe this is a colossally selfish thing to say (sorry) but that sounds so much simpler. Because then you can know that you are. Bent, I mean. Are you? You seem pretty bent to me, but then I’m probably biased._

_I leave a scent on you? There’s a thought. I am a dog after all, it is only natural that I should mark my territory (don’t worry I won’t get all possessive and domineering on you although I feel I should remind you that YOU ARE MY WOMAN UG UG)._

_I miss you too. A lot. Pads._

_P.S. Women have a special sixth sense that means they can tell the difference between identical items of clothing, which they evolved to torment the male species. Surely you knew this?_

_P.P.S. You look fierce, girlfriend! MWAHAHA._


	4. 30th October 1981

_Dear Padfoot,_

_I don’t know if you get the Prophet wherever in the middle of nowhere you are, so I thought I should tell you that they got Marlene McKinnon. They must have known somehow about everything she did for the Order, they turned up at her house in the middle of the night. Twelve of them. Just so that I don’t go completely insane, kill my share of Death Eaters as well, OK? Blow up whole bloody streets of bloody Death Eaters if you can._

_I think I vaguely remember Bones; was he in Ravenclaw? We might have done that toenail-growing charm that was really popular around fifth year on him when he kept shushing us in the library, but I wouldn’t bring it up, I think we broke his shoes and he’d probably make you scrub the tent or something. I do NOT miss your ‘manly possessions’, no not even those ones, although I can’t say my current quarters are much tidier than our tent ever was. It’s a war zone around here. Harry has a cold and he wipes his nose on absolutely everything, including the cat and somehow, don’t ask how, his own hair which is now not so much sticking up as it is swarming malevolently upwards like your old bathmat at Hogwarts, the one that nearly ate Remus’ feet. Lily is going insane trying to keep him presentable and non-lethal, although I don’t really know why because at least this way he matches the rest of the house. You think your mould farm is impressive; you should see Harry’s carrot puree. It has colonised the kitchen table and when I tried to clean a bit of it so I could write this I swear it tried to bite me. I’m being paranoid; magic doesn’t manifest this early, right? RIGHT??? I have enough on my plate without my son cultivating Death Carrot minions. Maybe we could train them up as guards._

_Your hair? Brushed? I’m having trouble picturing it but I’m sure you look very debonair etc. Maybe you should sleep with it in rollers and a dear little hairnet, Moony seems to have domesticated you just as Lily and fatherhood have me. One by one, the Marauders fall!_

_I’m actually quite worried about Pete now. I Flooed into his house just to check up on him and it was all cold and dusty; it looked like he hadn’t been there for a while. I hope he hasn’t run off to join the war, I don’t think he’d last very long. Maybe Dumbledore sent him off doing something, but I can’t think what and anyway he never sends Pete on missions, he knows what he’s good at and that isn’t it. If it was he’d be off on camping larks and you might have a marginally less irritating tentmate. Ah, what could have been._

_You can be as scathing as you like about my poeticity (shut up it should be a word); just wait until it happens to you. Some day some probably French bint will sweep into your life and whisk you off and before you know it you’ll be writing soppy verse about her kneecaps or something. And you will COMPLETELY deserve it for what you have done to my relationship with my son. That’s it; when he’s older I’m telling him all about you and Angela Runcorn in sixth year and the misunderstanding with the copious quantities of Firewhiskey and the balloons. REVENGE SWEET REVENGE. You can’t scare me Mr. Godfather, nothing I ever did was half as embarrassing as that._

_NO WAY am I letting you teach my son to play Quidditch; you will only encourage recklessness and irresponsibility with Beater’s clubs. Let us not forget what you did to Walden Macnair, and why it is entirely your fault he is so completely deranged. If I let you teach my young and impressionable and already completely chaotic hellspawn your special version of Quidditch with the special rules (like ‘Socking Slytherins over the head with the bat is completely allowed as long as McGoogles isn’t looking’), there won’t be a non-deranged Slytherin in Hogwarts by the time he leaves. Not that there were all that many in our day._

_Prongs_

_P.S.  OF COURSE he will be redhead-obsessed! No son of mine could be anything otherwise; I should have to disown him if he wasn’t._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Yes, I do actually know what happened with the balloons. Leave a review if you think you know; if you get it right 10 points to your house and you have just as twisted a mind as I do.


	5. 31st October 1981

_Pads,_

_A lesser man than I would be running for the hills by now, you should be bloody grateful I’m still around. But such is the epicness of what we have, that a person such as I who is normally such a bastion of Being Sensible is reduced to a total and utter moron who doesn’t flee screaming when the object of their desire is borderline psychotic and hangs around them when they’re asleep. Be very grateful, because your endlessly touted Looks will doubtless fail you eventually and I will be the only person stupid enough to stick by you when the legions of girls have disappeared._

_Too bloody right Dumbles banned Firewhiskey; he invented that rule solely to protect people from YOU. If you were allowed Firewhiskey you would wake up one morning to find that your tent had been strewn in bits across the country and you had let Voldemort get you pregnant. Think of the children!_

_Er. Just re-read that. So, to summarise, you aren’t allowed to drink because then you’d bear the child of the Dark Lord. What have you done to my brain when I wasn’t looking, exactly, and is the procedure reversible?_

_Somehow, even after the shopping fiasco of which we must never speak again, Amelia still seems keen to talk to me. I fear for my safety; as sane(ish) as she seems, a deranged lunatic clearly lurks beneath the surface. A facet to my new role that I failed to anticipate is that she expects me to provide dating advice, I think of a scathing and world-savvy nature. It made me realise how little experience I actually have of all that, if you think about it. I mean, I was too much of a pompous fool through most of Hogwarts to get within ten feet of a Romantic Encounter and then I somehow ended up with one of my best friends, so there was no onus at all to get to know’ each other (except, well, that way). For this I count my blessings because otherwise I would die alone. But anyway I was completely baffled by most of what she was saying. She kept asking me stuff about waiting X amount of seconds to get in touch, and appropriate dress codes for a second date, and then after about ten minutes she looked at me and laughed a bit and went ‘Sorry, you must have heard all this hundreds of times before’. I’ve never heard of any of this, is this normal? Does everyone else have this weird code thing? I never appreciated before how wonderfully simple our relationship is before. Thank Merlin I have you and I don’t have to deal with it. I fear I wouldn’t survive two minutes. You don’t think I’m loose for letting you feel me up on our first date, do you? Except that we didn’t really have a first date as such. Or a second. Or any dates at all, actually. Like I said, wonderfully simple. I much prefer our way, no bollocking time limits about waiting before sleeping together for one thing. Yes, that’s right; beneath this mustardy jumper I am a SEX MANIAC. Look at me, who would ever suspect?_

_Yes, Sirius, your motorbike does have ‘teeth and tits and is on fire’. A lesser man might feel jealous, what need have you for anything with breasts when you have_ moi _?_

_There is a reason it was behind the bike shed, Monsieur Padfootles, and that is that you were smoking behind it, which I would point out is every bit as clichéd as the snogging. And no, no you haven’t failed to teach me. I think we need a revision session of that lesson, actually, SOON. As in, COME HOME SOON._

_You know me too well; we must have some creepy psychic bond after all. That, or all the other options were RUBBISH. Billy Paul? Really? And I thought you had taste. Use that option and there will be no relationship to write about. And yes, we are a couple. You are going to have to accept that with good grace. I will not be used! Also, and this is bound to be in vain but I shall say it anyway, please please please have the good sense not to use the word ‘buggering’. I don’t like it, and if I find out you have I will throw a diva hissy fit, or probably just go red around the ears and stammer indignantly for a while until you find a way to shut me up. Shouldn’t be too hard for you. Oh dear, I make an effort to seem like I wear at least a scrap of the trousers in this relationship, and look how spectacularly it fails. I don’t even have a button, I don’t think, or the fly, or whichever bit you have managed to smear jam on. I fear for our future. At this rate, I’m going to turn into a gingham-wearing doormat of a housewife before the year is out. And not Farrah Fawcett. Is this not the selfsame letter in which you proclaimed that you had forsaken forever any and all letching at anyone who isn’t me? Does Farrah Fawcett not count as ‘anyone’? I’m hurt._

_I think I have something of an advantage here, being the sort of person who thinks things through; I was thinking about Feelings and What Does It All Mean? and so forth before we even got together, whereas has this stuff ever crossed your mind in the last four years? Didn’t think so. Not a criticism, just a comment, but it can’t be easy having it all come crashing down on you like the proverbial ton of bricks all at once. Four years of it all at once; ouch. But seriously, although I am loath to give you more fodder for the mighty booming Remus Is A Girl cannon, I get it. And it’s OK. I know it probably doesn’t fit very well with the years of being Hogwart’s resident heartbreaker and causer of widespread trembling of feminine knees, but I don’t think it has to mean that you’re any less… I don’t know, any less of who you were then. Oh Merlin, I know, about the male thing. I try not to think about it. I don’t think ‘I’m with a male’; I think ‘I’m with Sirius’. It’s much better, try it. And as far as I can see neither of us will have to deal with it about any other male ever again. Moonysexual is a good way of looking at it, very well done. Apparently I have taught you more than words like ‘postulate’, which is cheering._

_And no, I never really looked at girls. I mean, I tried, to see what the fuss was all about, but I didn’t really get it. Which is probably just as well, considering I hung around with you. You would have snaffled anyone who ever came anywhere near me. Erm. In answer to your other question, I don’t know, thus the colossal convenience of all the above bollocks about Identity and Labels and whatnot which was all just a convenient way of skirting around the fact that I DON’T KNOW and it is not nearly as simple being me as you seem to think. Maybe if we hadn’t happened, it might have been a girl, some manic clumsy female version of you for me to nag and worry about ad nauseam. I mean, I didn’t look at boys either._

_Come back soon and leave your scent on me. Moony (the Padsexual)._

_P.S. Please don’t hyperventilate to death, that would be an inglorious way for someone so dashing to end his days. Also, I would miss you._

_P.P.S. I love you too._

Sirius rolled over on his narrow bed, instinctively shielding the letter from Bones’ eyes, and ran one grubby fingertip over Moony’s last four words. They looked so fragile, seeming to quiver and blur slightly in the flickering light of the tent’s dim lantern. Remus had written them with a certain determination that was obvious in the dark, wavering lines, lines that had been pressed into the parchment by a shaking hand, one that had slipped and smudged the _y_ so that the tail plummeted down towards the foot of the parchment. Sirius wanted to reach into the page and seize those words, keep them safely with him forever, make sure they never faded. It seemed absurd to leave them exposed on mere parchment. Someone could take them from him any minute. He folded the letter with meticulous care and slid it into the pocket of his coat. In a few days time, strange rough hands would pull it out of his pocket and he would see it disappear into a sack as cold steel snapped shut around his wrists. For now, though, it burned through the coat’s worn fabric like an emblem, like a beacon of hope.

 

 

 

_Dear Prongs,_

_I know. Bones gets the Prophet sent to him. Merlin it sounds really really stupid but I am going to bloody get them for that._

_Oh Merlin oh bloody hell. This isn’t really going to be a direct reply to your letter because well er. Because I have something else I need to tell you and it would not be exaggerating to say that my heart may get itself entangled in its own arteries and explode before I manage to explain. Right. I will try to be coherent I swear but it will not be easy._

_Before I tell you, I want to say that you are my best friend forever and ever and one for all and all for one and so on. And I’m still me. ~~I think.~~_

_OK I’m not putting this off any more. No, I’m not. I’mnotI’mnot._

_There isn’t going to be a French bint. There is a someone- but that person is firstly very very English and second of all-_

_Second of all, male._

_And it’s Moony._

_Don’t, don’t faint or something, please, you are married to a redhead and have a male heir you do not understand the definition of angst. I am so so sorry I haven’t told you before; it feels like lying even though I don’t think I actually have. Lied to you about it. Except maybe like sometimes telling you that Remus was coming over for a drink when actually-_

_Anyway not telling you does feel like lying especially since it’s not really a new thing. You mentioned a couple of letters ago about me and Remus sneaking off together in seventh year to ‘plot a mutiny or make passionate love’… Well, erm, we didn’t spend much time on the mutiny._

_I’ve freaked you out, haven’t I? I’m never going to hear from you again. Everything I tell you feels like I’m oversharing wildly but I can’t not tell you. We tell each other things, you wouldn’t stop going on about Lily all through Hogwarts, you still don’t and this is just like that really except, except that it’s Moony. And now I have to freak you out even more and even myself a little bit because I find this amazing, and weird, and terrifying to admit even to myself, but I’m sort of completely in love with him. Remember when you and Lily first got together and you sort of staggered around for days looking punchdrunk and said things like ‘Do you know who else asks people to bloody well pass the bloody pumpkin juice and shut up for two bloody seconds about their bloody girlfriend? My girlfriend!’ Like that. Except less horrifying. And completely different._

_I would tell you about this stuff if it were a girl, wouldn’t I, so I’m going to tell you, at the end of his last letter Moony put ‘I love you too’ and oh my god, I can’t believe I’m admitting this but I’m shivering a little bit thinking about it and I don’t know why. I swear I’m not turning into a woman despite the plethora (see he is good for me he teaches me words) of evidence to support that theory. But it’s only fair considering the amount of Lily-related information you’ve bombarded me with over the years even when I resorted to sticking my head under the pillow and going LA LA LA LA LA that I get to share some of this with you. And as weird as it is and as much as I don’t really understand my own taste I mean seriously the NOSE, as weird as all of that is, I love him. Merlin’s knackers there is literally no way of saying that that doesn’t look like it should be decorated with songbirds and little hearts._

_Oh god now I’m perversely tempted to actually decorate it with songbirds and little hearts._

_Seriously, I am panicking ever so slightly as you might possibly have gleaned and my mouth is so dry I wouldn’t be surprised if I die of dehydration with pen still in hand and this letter never reaches you. I don’t think you will disown me, or anything. I just want this to be OK, and normal, and not to make me this whole new person or change the fact that you are my best mate. I guess it probably is all of that. You are, though. My best mate. Even if you’re not as good in bed as Moony._

_Was it too early to make that joke? Hey look at that, I’m being inappropriate. Guess it hasn’t made me a whole new person after all._

_The still very manly Padfoot._

Sirius’s quill jerked across the parchment. He fought to keep his hand steady as he signed off, then placed his quill carefully on the rickety table by his bed and turned back to the letter. An odd sense of peace flooded through him, and he slumped back against his pillow, gazing at the letter. He knew now that however nervous he might be about sending this letter, there was no way he could do anything else. Sirius covered his face with both hands and took an enormous drag of air between his fingers. This was it. This was it.

Light pierced the gaps between his fingers as something silvery fell through the roof of the tent, throwing the corners of the tent, including the letter, into shadow. Sirius sat bolt upright, his heart suddenly in his throat. He groped for his coat, the one with Remus’ letter in it, but could not find it.

The weasel could have been made of congealed moonlight. It spoke in the voice of Arthur Weasley.

 

_‘He found them.’_

**THE END.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Finishing this marks both the longest thing I’ve ever written (20 pages on Word) and the first time I’ve ever actually completed a proper story. I’m ridiculously happy that anyone has read it, and even reviewed it, and it’s because people have that I think I’m going to keep doing this. Writing about the Marauders, I mean. I hope that’s good news to someone.


End file.
